When You Marry Yourself

WARNING: Long post on a true story ahead. Hence if you're having a headache or are on drugs, please avoid reading this post. If you do decide to read on, don't drive a car afterwards!

This is a true story about a friend of mine. I wrote this post a long time ago but never got around posting it...so finally here it is. I'm not writing this to mock my friends or his recent misfortune, or to mock marriage (I'm not for or against marriage). Neither do I see this as juicy blog fodder. I just want to understand the situation better, share it with all of you and I want to learn from his experience. I believe we learn from the people we associate and their experiences, so here it goes. Let's call my friend B.

B is a fairly nice, friendly, educated, Indian guy living in Aus working as an IT Consultant. I met him through my mum, cos his mum and my mum are good friends. B has been living in Aus for about 6yrs now and I have known him for about 4 years, and he has now become a good family friend. He's been visiting us, celebrating b'days with us, going on trips together etc etc. All along, though I like him as a friend, I sensed that he's a massive, blockbuster, control-freak! Now why I said that is cos he always wants to be right...even when we discussed about an India/Aus cricket match or something as simple as which suburb would be a great one to buy a house from, he always wanted to be RIGHT. He hardly respected another's opinion - instead he took it all personally and kept on throwing hissy fits *Kindy boy alert!*. Anyways, each time it happened, I used to just laugh it off *don't wanna sweat the small stuff*. But I always thought that the guy desperately needed some flexibility in his thinking. It was almost as if he was the only person on Earth! Whatever he was like, I still thought he was an OK friend and cos our families knew each other too, I somehow stopped myself from putting him in a spaceship and skyrocketing him to Jupiter for good! You know, we have all kinds of people as friends, and we just have to get along with each other, as long as they don't start skating on our faces.

Now I remember telling my mum that he's too headstrong, and each time I said that my mum told me that I should leave him alone. Yeah that's my mum, always taking his side. Well 2yrs ago, B suddenly went to India on a holiday to find a bride for himself *a note to my non-Indian friends: that's how some Indian men get married - woooooosh here's a bride, whaaaaaaaam he's married!*. Apparently his mum had already 'looked' on his behalf and was waiting with pics of 3 girls *out of the initial 200+ pics phewww!*, selected by her as the top 3 'potential' wives for her beloved, most eligible son on Earth, bleh! Within just 2 weeks he was engaged to be married to a young girl who had just completed an IT degree at an Indian uni *yes you heard that right, they only knew each other for just 2 weeks, I repeat!*. B let us all know about his instant status-change from India itself, and I was quite stunned at the short period that it all took place in. How can you be so brave to get engaged to someone you met only 14 days ago? And I'm saying that on behalf of the girl too...she didn't know B at all, except that he was well-educated and had a great job in Aus. For all I know, he could've been Ted Bundy's brother and she could have been Lorena Bobbit's reincarnation! Well jokes apart, I really couldn't understand HOW it all happens so quickly in most Indian marriages but it happened with B too. So with a deep shock to my psychological immune system, I finally accepted that this was really happening and that B was about to get married. So I was excited for him as well.

Then he flew back to Sydney, and flew back to India again within 2 months or so, and they got married in India in March 2005. A massive wedding that probably went on for about 6 days, a guest list of 3000+ *B comes from a rich family and his dad was a well-known buisnessman in their city* and a wedding DVD of 6 disks or so which we all watched when he returned to Sydney *that explains my dizzyness in 2005!*. His wife K was still in India as he was preparing her Aus visa for her to arrive here. Few months later, K arrived and we all got to know her quite well. She is a great girl with a good sense of humor and a lively outlook to life. And since she was highly educated, she was not the kind of girl who'd just sit at home worshipping her husband 24/7 chanting 'om om ommy husband'. But I realised her life changed quite fast. She stopped wearing skirts/jeans (always wore shalwar), stopped eating meat (she was a non-veg before), cooked day and night for B (asked for cooking tips from her mum online on a daily basis), did the grocery shopping by herself (I caught her carrying heavy loads of bags by herself one day) etc etc. Somehow I knew K wasn't getting what she deserved from this marriage - and that is LOVE and ACCEPTANCE for who she was. K has now turned into a husband-worshipping machine-like wife that some Indian men desired and pushed their women to become. I even told my mum that K is weird...or has turned weird. Cos every time when we visited them, K comes and admires my skirt or my top, and tells me that she'd love to dress like that. And when I asked her why she won't do it, she used to tell me 'B don't like it'. How unfair! I mean B wore everything he wanted, ate what he wanted (being a vegetarian was his choice, not K's), got his food on the table at the right time etc etc, but K couldn't live the way she wanted to...not even in the clothes department?? *I wonder how the Bed department was then!* Though she didn't complain about it, I could tell something was very wrong here. But they both appeared to be happy and so in love, although that love looked so artificial to one person and that was me. K never showed us that they were having any kind of problems at all. Either she hid it very well or made it seem like it was just another new phase in her life that she needed time to get used to. So it was a picture-perfect marriage and their new life was unravelling beautifully before them. So it seemed.

2 years later, February 2007: K suddenly leaves to India without even informing any of us! That was when they had just moved into their newly built home and B's mum was also in Sydney enjoying her son's new house *The 'dreaded' MIL alert!*. We were quite baffled about K leaving just like that...but all B and his mum said to us was that K went on a small holiday and will be back later on. I wasn't so sure about that answer so I rang up her office and they told me she had resigned! And that so-called holiday started to become like a lifetime holiday cos Nov 2007, we still didn't have K back in Sydney and not even an email from her! We were worried and were missing K alot, cos K and we were very good friends. My mum and I tried to find her phone number in India and even that was not possible. I kept asking B what was going on, and he always ignored my questions about K *at this stage I was beginning to think that K was being murdered!*. I asked B for her number in India and he didn't give it to me. Then we realised that it must be some kind of fall-out and we stopped asking questions. I made up my mind that I'd probably never hear from K again. I was feeling very sad cos I don't like leaving a friendship in the lurch and moving on without knowing what really happened to them.

Just 3 months ago B left to India all of a sudden. Came back few weeks ago. On that same day I had an email in my Inbox from someone that I never expected to hear from again..it was from K! I was so happy to hear from her, I was in tears! But when I read the content I was in shock too. It read that she and B had gotten a divorce 2 weeks prior to that email! Apparently K didn't want to contact us all this time cos she badly wanted to get the divorce, so she didn't wanna cause any problems for herself by spreading the news before it happened. She told me everything that had happened from the day she got married to B. I wasn't surprised about some of the things she stated about B. B and his mum have even forced K's family to buy furniture for their new home and to bring jewellery etc! It was truly sickening to hear that. Cmon this is the 21st century, B is supposedly a modern dude, he lived and worked in Aus, he's not a farmer boy with cows, so we really can't be talking about dowry can we now??? And K isn't some Cow to be controlled and milked! Anyways finally K and I are in touch again and K sounded very happy - that's all that matters. I then asked B what happened...he told me that they got a divorce and not to ask anymore questions. I do feel sorry for both K and B...I feel bad that their marriage didn't work out. But what/who is to be blamed, you tell me.


I have never been married but I can quite clearly say that any relationship is not a business plan, neither is it an animal-farm that you get to control. When you're in a relationship, there are 2 humans involved...and 2 sets of opinions to consider...2 sets of everything that need to be carefully analysed and shared. When you get married, you become 2 halves. You're no longer that one individual...that means you've got to think about the other person's feelings too. Marriage is not a monopoly...it's a bond between 2 souls. And if you can't live upto that, please don't get married. Being selfish and trying to change the other person to your liking would be like marrying yourself. It's so very easy to see another person's faults and try to change them, but it's so difficult to change our own selves. And that's when Life doesn't give you what you want...cos you refuse to give it what it wants. Marriage is both give and take...not just take only. Now share your wisdom with me please.


This is one of my fav Hindi wedding songs...enjoy!

Current Music: Tum Agar Saamne from the Hindi movie Raaz